A durability-based review of hitting the wall in marathon running
Ketones and caffeine for cognition and endurance in hot environments
Cognitive function during self-paced cycling in the heat
Cold acclimation for performance in cold environments
Self-talk and fatigue tolerance during high-intensity power sports
Study date: Jul 2026
Hitting the wall in a marathon is usually attributed to glycogen depletion, but late-race performance impairment still persists even with modern fuelling strategies. In this review, the authors set out to “synthesize the physiological and psychophysiological mechanisms contributing to hitting the wall and to propose an integrative durability-based framework for understanding late-race performance deterioration during marathon running”.
REVIEW DETAILS
The review synthesises evidence across metabolic stress, thermoregulatory strain, dehydration, gastrointestinal dysfunction, neuromuscular fatigue, biomechanical deterioration, perceptual responses, and pacing errors as contributors to late-race performance collapse.
Durability is proposed as the key concept: an athlete’s capacity to resist deterioration in physiological function and performance during prolonged exercise.
The review positions hitting the wall as a psycho-physiological performance-collapse phenomenon rather than a single metabolic event, arising from the cumulative interaction of these stressors.
KEY RESULTS
The cumulative interaction of metabolic, thermoregulatory, gastrointestinal, neuromuscular, biomechanical, and perceptual stressors progressively increases perceived effort and impairs pace regulation during a marathon.
Durability, not fitness alone, is proposed to explain why runners with similar aerobic capacity experience different late-race outcomes.
Late-race collapse is better understood as a reduced capacity to sustain function under prolonged stress.
AUTHORS’ CONCLUSION
Hitting the wall should not be viewed as simply running out of fuel, but as the result of reduced durability and psycho-physiological dysregulation arising from multiple interacting stressors.
Strategies to improve durability, including marathon-specific training, optimised fuelling, gastrointestinal tolerance, thermoregulatory preparation, neuromuscular resilience, pacing regulation, and perceptual awareness, may reduce susceptibility to hitting the wall.
RESULT CONFIDENCE
The durability framework is proposed as an organising concept rather than a single mechanism with its own direct experimental test, so individual contributing factors still need to be weighed against their own separate evidence bases.
PRACTICAL TAKEAWAY
This review showed that hitting the wall in the marathon is unlikely to reflect a single cause like glycogen depletion, and is better explained as a cumulative breakdown across metabolic, thermoregulatory, gastrointestinal, neuromuscular, biomechanical, and perceptual systems that progressively decrease an athlete’s durability which is their capacity to sustain physiological function and pace over a prolonged effort.
My recommendation for marathon runners and coaches is to consider late-race performance as a complex training target rather than assuming a single variable leads to decreased performance. Improving durability through marathon-specific long runs, gut training, heat preparation, practising fuelling at race pace, and practising pacing should be key considerations in marathon training plans.
This durability framework is consistent with direct physiological data showing that VO2 Max, running economy, and lactate threshold speed all decline progressively after 90 and 120 minutes of heavy-intensity running in well-trained marathoners. Resolving this issue requires building durability which must come from a range of different training components.
RELATED RESEARCH
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.